PLATFORM (part 2)

contents 8 Doing Architecture Graham Crist

9 Editorial

Melanie Dodd

10 Expanded Field Proposition Anna Johnson and Richard Black

14 Not Digital Architecture Mark Burry

18 Projects Aa

Adam Jackson – Victorian Police Headquarters p.64 Ahmad Ridha Abd Razak – The Inhabitable Wall p.124 Annelise Porter – Transient City Dwellers: Melbourne’s Niche Ecology p.118

Bb

Benjamin Statkus – Salt is Bad for the Grass p.120 Bradley Anderson – Just Concrete p.78

Cc

Chaiprasert Kanjanakan – RMIT Building 8 p.60 Charles Inglis – Port Phillip Boat Building School p.94

Ee

Elizabeth Wan Tun Lee – Flexible Mixed Use B Grade Architectures p.70 Evan Atkinson – Air Movement at the QV Market: Tourism and Cooking Schools p.130

Kk

Kerryn Minehan – Bendigo p.36 Kilim Liem – Footscray Central: Identity p.80 Kristian Van Schaik – Rural Subdivision p.62

Ll

Lam Chueng – Housing Clusters and Public Parkland, Hastings p.100 Laura Harper – Studies and Designs for Houses in Jeparit p.108 Li Shan Siong – In the Meantime p.66 Leong Eu Adrian Tan – Urban Graining: Docklands p.26 Lloyd McCathie – Caustic Reorientation: An Information Centre for Melbourne Water p.18 Lucinda Mason – Old Simplot Factory, South Kensington Station p.110

Mm

Felicity Barraclough – Avalon Regional Airport p.54 Feras Raffoul – Megalomania p.22 Fraser Paxton – New Ground p.96

Man Ching Chan – Milking Nature p.104 Mark Raggatt – Shanghai Seminary p.88 Margaret White – The Institution Grows p.42 Matthew Bird – The Exoticus p.46 Melanie Scholl – A Monument: The Holocaust Memorial Library p.50 Meredith Dufour – All the Way Around and Back Again p.44

Gg

Nn

Ff

Giovanni Mercuri – RE-correction p.98

Jj

James Soo – Industrial Renovation p.34 Jerome Frumar – The Sixth Station p.76 Jing Zhi Kee – Urban Incubator p.126 Jonathan Podborsek – Highly Evolved p.30 Joseph Wright – Mind the Gap p.84 Josephine Lettieri – Suburban Fringe: Inhabiting the Buffer p.52 Julian Canterbury and Geoffrey Binder – Relocating the 3Rs p.68 Julianne Nee – Extended Linkages: A Re-interpretation of Five Stations from Hastings to Stony Point p.102

134 Index of Supervisors

Nick Ruljancich – Project: Immigration Support Centre p.82 Nina Dubowitz – The Institution as Foreign Body p.40

Pp

Paul Nicholas – Hotel de Ville p.56 Penelope Webster – URB.AG.FISH.SCI: Masterplan for an Alternative Development p.20

Rr

Rebecca Naughtin – Animalia p.72 Rodney Eggleston – It Ain’t the Old AMP p.132 Roger Schmidt – Hastings Foreshore Park p.32 Rory Hyde – Smith Street Redux p.128

Ss

Sara Karolina Halldin – Niche Space: Framed Urban Encounters p.122 Sarah Smith – Synchronised Rhythms p.92 Sean Van Der Velden – A Note on the Type(ology) p.112 Stephen Herbst – Shoptivity Centre p.74 Sze Wan Winnie Ha – Collective Communal Network p.28

Tt

Teck Chee Chow – Re-connecting the Fragments: Research and Education Facilities in Crib Point p.86 Tetsuo Nishikawa – School of In-between p.90 Tim Schork – Contesting Views p.114 Tjeerd Van Der Vliet – Arts Campus, RMIT University p.38 Tobias Nattrass-Pond – Student Union Building RMIT p.48

Vv

Van-Anh Nguyen – Batman Library p.106

Ww

Wanjiru Karanja – Footscray Modal Interchange p.24

Yy

Yang Haw Teo – Train Stations: Hastings to Stony Point p.116 Yenny Wijaya – Footscray Cultural and Arts Centre p.58

Caustic Reorientation: An Information Centre for Melbourne Water Lloyd McCathie The primary intention of this project is to display water and information within a liquid and dynamic architecture structured on the concept of caustic reorientation.

Apart from providing a connection between city and river, the site is considered through its situation as a dynamic four-way thoroughfare.

‘Caustic’ in the title of this project refers to the network of reflected light often seen at the bottom of swimming pools. Of particular interest to this project is the way that this effect responds to the active, dynamic phenomena on the site and how this could contribute to a reorientation.

The function of an information centre is frequently introspective and privileged. The aim here is to merge the information centre with the public circulation, exposing information and making it available to passers by.

A rediscovery of the occupant’s position within the city is relative to the dynamic rail lines, the fluid Yarra, ‘picturesque’ Southgate and the linear northbank. The reorientation will involve a ‘movement from sensation to action’, a movement from Walter Benjamin’s distracted absence to a focused presence. This occurs through the medium of water.

A desire to create a flow space was achieved through the use of behavioural animation where a series of agents move around the site. The site is analysed in terms of attractors and locators. As the agents move around the site they leave traces of their motion in different ways. The methodology describes flow analogously to the example of a river and its bank. The amount of erosion is dependent on how fast the river is flowing, while the path of the bank is defined by the trajectory of the river.

Supervisor Pia Ednie-Brown, refer page 139 18

URB.AG.FISH.SCI Masterplan for an Alternative Development PENELOPE WEBSTER History (memory), adjacency, overlay, inundation, inhabitation and sanctuary are key terms of reference for this masterplan. Architecture, landscape, urban design and strategic infiltration have been combined on specifically selected sites along the Maribyrnong River in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Environmental degradation and damage caused by excessive dumping of noxious wastes into the Yarra River and later into the Maribyrnong create a direct link to our contemporary context from the industrial past of heavy industry. In turn, the boom of development running through Melbourne at the beginning of the twenty-first century can perhaps be seen at its most suburban here. But are the developments what the area needs? Are the relatively fragile eco-systems being considered?

Agricultural process in the form of fishing currently occurs as an urban flow across the site. Aquaculture (the principles involved in farming fish) is the underlying influence for this masterplan. It is intended that the project would incorporate the reintroduction to the river of the seven endangered native species as well as the facilitation of dedicated fishing areas once the populations have returned to normal levels.

The built form includes the program necessary to run multiple fish sanctuaries with community driven markets as foreseeable future interventions. Materials are simple and recyclable where possible. Two sites have been worked up as drivers for future development. One is a working sanctuary/farm while the other is a manipulation of the landscape to provide protection from flooding. The project exists at several different levels and at multiple scales allowing the life of the river to reassert itself into its community.

Sustainability of practice and continuation of community relations through shared goals is prioritised.

After decades of neglect and misuse, this alternative development proposes a program that hopes to be mutually beneficial for both the built environment and the river as the two inextricably linked elements of this city move toward full reconciliation.

Supervisors Sand Helsel and Rosalea Monacella, refer page 139 20

Megalomania FERAS RAFFOUL ‘Bigness destroys, but it is also a new beginning, it can reassemble what it breaks.’

Rem Koolhaas, SMLXL. We live in a world where human needs fluctuate and follow the latest trends. As people move out of the city we build cities in the suburbs, and give them grand names, such as Eastland, Southland, Northland.

Then when we want to return, the city itself is no longer enough for us, and so we build cities in the city: QV, Melbourne Central, Crown Casino, Southern Cross and Docklands. And so what about the inbetween; the gap between the city and the outer suburbs?

The project is to fill this ‘in-between’, to bring together different cultures, events and programs as disparate as those found in, for example, the CBD and Diamond Creek. The main source of transport to the site is by train. Using the existing train station, a mega-structure is constructed around it connecting different suburbs and cultures into the site. The structure houses programs created from the social, economic and cultural influences of the neighbouring suburbs. It also uses the adjoining topography of houses, roads and sporting venues, replicating this on the surface of the new structures.

A variety of programs are strategically chosen and located on different levels and parts of the building, ranging from the sporting to the institutional, the residential to the library, the commercial to retail, the restaurant to the community centre and more. By including programs which local and surrounding communities can relate to, the ambition is for the new structure to bring to the community what has been yearned for; a new kind of city.

‘Bigness no longer needs the city; it competes with the city; it represents the city; it preempts the city; better still it is the city.’

Rem Koolhaas, SMLXL.

Supervisor Martyn Hook, refer page 140 22

Footscray Modal Interchange WANJIRU KARANJA This project investigates the idea of design process, engaged through the question of the contemporary interchange. It postulates systems of creating difference and complexity in the mixed-use typology, challenging orthodox methodologies of design and architecture: that is, circulation, form, program. The proposal is sited at Footscray Station, specifically chosen as it is part of the Victorian Government’s 2030 initiative.

The process is based on specific knowns including a brief, and larger site questions such as access and permeability. It speculates that by shifting/dislocating vertical relationships through the section, there occurs a reconfiguration of programmatic associations, urban typologies that might enrich a project of this scale. The process affords the project possibilities/opportunities that inform the architecture. Its aim is to reconfigure conventional programmatic relationships in order to create new ways of experiencing the architecture.

Overlaps occur in this process, creating ‘hybrid conditions’/‘programmatic impurities’. Areas of crossover occur, where two or more programs are forced to co-exist. Some programs intrude into each other, causing abrupt disruptions and re-ordering conventional planning methods. The proposal speculates for instance on what might happen when retail and commerce co-exist or collide. Open public Spaces counter the internalisation of commercial space that occurs in similar generic typologies.

The building is permeable to the site, with linkages intended to heighten the usage of the site.

The process affords circulation across and through the site via a series of disparate linkages that occur through the building. The project is a hub of culture and commerce, with linkages across the site, forming programmatic symbiosis with existing context, and maintaining difference and complexity within the type. The opportunities brought to the project by the process are a matrix of rich complex relations between spaces and events. The agenda of the contemporary interchange assumes a new function in the urban realm, other than that of basic transportation.

It is a place where the urban comes to life – spectacle, energy, frequency and indifference.

Supervisor Vivian Mitsogianni, refer page 142 24

LITTLE COLLINS

LITTLE COLLINS

ELIZABETH STREET

ELIZABETH STREET

COLLINS STREET

COLLINS STREET

COLLINS STREET

FLINDERS LANE

FLINDERS LANE

FLINDERS LANE

FLINDERS STREET

FLINDERS STREET

SWANSTON STREET

LITTLE COLLINS

SWANSTON STREET

BOURKE STREET

SWANSTON STREET

BOURKE STREET

ELIZABETH STREET

BOURKE STREET

FLINDERS STREET

Urban Graining: Docklands Leong eu Adrian Tan Docklands, the biggest private-public partnership redevelopment in the world, has seen large areas left vacant, under-utilised and under-delivered. This proposal addresses the critique that the plan set by ARM has been diluted by marketing ambitions and quick profit. The scheme is not necessarily a solution but instead offers a suggestion, questioning the sterilising effects of the Docklands environment.

The scheme takes the city’s laneways as precedent, adding another system or layer over Docklands’ existing street infrastructure and intertwining an urban grain with the Docklands’ system, both planned and unplanned.

The proposal acts as a catalyst or a platform for unplanned programs to develop, encouraging the spilling of programs and utilising the constant flux of these programs to invigorate and knit the different precincts to create a braid of activities.

Supervisor Dean Boothroyd and Joseph Reyes, refer page 136 26

Collective Communal Network Sze wan Winnie ha This project makes a criticism of the Hong Kong government’s vision for the West Kowloon reclamation site, with its fully railway-orientated approach. The lack of a comprehensive pedestrian walkway network leads to an urban disconnection between the new land and the local community of Yau Ma Tei. In order to tie back the new infrastructure into the old urban fabric, the proposal is a series of fragmented, prototypical walkway networks which are site-specific, with different strategies to respond to different sites.

By walking through this circulation network, from Tau Ma Tei to West Kowloon, a similar distance from Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station to RMIT, a historical timeline of the local urban development can be experienced: from 1930s and 1940s typical verandah buildings, 1970s and 1980s commercial and residential mix-used buildings, to 1990s podium-based high-rise development.

With small interventions of pedestrian upstairs linkages, the bond between buildings, shops, daily life and memories of Yau Ma Tei can be reinforced. Parkland proposed next to the 1970s mansions not only becomes a tool of connection, but also supports the growth of streetlife and communal activities.

External linkages open up the typical enclosed podium building to develop a more vibrant and transparent urban life and maintain a continuity of human traces which can be seen from outside.

This daily-encountered, communally-engaging network system provides an infrastructure model needed in Hong Kong’s complex fabric. In addition, the incorporation of what can be defined as the ‘collective creativity’ of the local community, allows the shaping of a social structure with a deep understanding of historical context.

Supervisor Sand Helsel, refer page 140 28

Highly Evolved JONATHAN PODBORSEK This hybrid use tower is located between Melbourne’s Docklands and the city, but it doesn’t matter where you put it. The project addresses contemporary digital form-making through the creation of an ‘evolutionary’ methodology for design.

The process operates directly on form, the first part generative and a second, morphological.

The ‘starting topologies’ are grown from a custom-made program called ‘skyScratcher’, which necessarily fulfils the programmatic requirements of each building type. While growing, these entities are programmed with desires – commercial space is attracted to the city and Collins Street side of the building, and hotel and apartment spaces are attracted to optimal views. Their topological complexity is controlled by the nonscalar size of the system and the strength of their individual cohesion.

These ‘starting topologies’ are then inserted into minimal surface energy optimisation software and allowed to negotiate their final positions and forms – an ecology of micro interactions produce the macro outcomes, which cannot be drawn or modelled in a conventional way.

In this way of making, form is understood as having certain relationships and characteristics but is never explicitly drawn geometrically.

This process offers a way of digitally crafting form through the characteristics, properties and energies of surface; as such surface becomes loaded with ‘intent’. Surface is the direct outcome of process. This offers a significant departure from contemporary digital architectural form making, which typically avoids directly operating on architectural form.

Supervisor Paul Minifie, refer page 141

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Hastings Foreshore Park Roger Schmidt Hastings is a rural bayside town approximately sixty kilometres from Melbourne. It has been nominated in Melbourne’s 2030 document as the major port for Western Port Bay; it is at the edge of the urban growth boundary and is within a zone designated as a UNESCO Biosphere. These potentials present some conflicting values and pressures on the site which this project aims to resolve.

The subject site is the foreshore edge behind the Hastings marina. It is compromised by the current configuration of carparking, boat storage and boat launching facilities which interrupt the physical and visual access to the foreshore. This project reorganises the existing foreshore facilities and introduces some new civic programs including an exhibition space, lecture theatre and restaurant.

The landscape quality of the foreshore is interpreted within the design as a central park, two linear buildings and car parking that defines the site’s edges. The northern building contains the civic programs; the southern contains functions that address the marina’s requirements. The plans follow the lines of the landscape; the buildings and park allow for the continuation of the open space which was once part of the mangrove and salt-marsh bands.

The tidal properties of Western Port Bay produce a precise coastal layering of saltmarsh, mangrove and tea tree from which the tapered form of the buildings are derived. The elevations contain ambiguous perspectives and screened layers which uphold the ‘anti-object’ approach to the site.

Supervisors Mauro Baracco, Lucinda McLean and Louise Wright, refer page 134 32

Industrial Renovation james soo The west of Melbourne city is currently dominated by a large piece of industrial ‘brown-land’. This is a very typical phenomenon at the fringe of cities; this industrial land once served as an important contributor to the growth of Melbourne City. Over time, however, such land becomes redundant. This project attempts to reconsider the possibilities that lie within ‘unwanted’ brown-land sites. How can we rejuvenate these industrial sites and at the same time address the issues of city sprawl? The intention is not simply change the use of these sites, but to retain an existing industrial fabric and at the same time, introduce new programs.

Living, working and light industrial uses are combined here, to co-exist harmoniously and establish a new living prototype. The physical modification to the site is kept minimal. The existing qualities of the site are to remain and be enhanced. Existing buildings and systems are not removed but tweaked and repaired to give a new life.

The existing spatial experience of the light industries is extended into the daily lives of the new residents.

Histories are reinterpreted and re-told in a nostalgic way. This project proposes, that as architects, although we create new things, we must also learn to repair what has been built.

Supervisors Nigel Bertram, Paul Dash and Paulo Sampaio, refer page 143 34

Bendigo Kerryn Minehan BOOK SHELVES

This project investigates the design of a cultural centre for a large-scale regional Victorian centre. The building produces a community space and also reflects on the ways in which a community is foregrounded through certain geographical and linguistic boundaries.

BOOKSHELVES + STUDY AREA

EXHIBITION 06 MULTIMEDIA

EXHIBIT 05

EXHIBIT 04

The proposal aims to promote and support community development through the arts, allowing for diverse cultural and recreational programs, providing the facilities to cater for the city’s growing population and surrounding townships.

The centre takes the city’s name ‘Bendigo’ as an iconic sign. The word establishes the identity of a particular place, as distinct from other spaces and acts as a marker for visitors and residents, signifying a collective sense of belonging.

The location on the peripheral boundary of the central business district is an attempt to intensify the landuse within the area and to create a new pedestrian link between existing retail districts. It aims to promote greater pedestrian activity and improve the use of public spaces.

The letters spelling out the word ‘Bendigo’ are used as the basis for generating design at a number of levels. Always determined to resist the literalisation of a word as the building facade, the project peruses numerous strategies for establishing the three-dimensional quality of the centre. It is used as a tool to reference compositional devices from local nineteenth-century and post-war architecture, as streetscape, as delineation of function, as potential three-dimensional spaces in gaps between strokes of a letter’s character and as connections across the form of the building.

At street level one does not see the word’s meaning as the letters have successfully transformed. However from a distance the centre achieves clarity as a sign.

Supervisors Karen Burns, refer page 137, and Peter Raisbeck, refer page 143 36

Arts Campus: RMIT University Tjeerd Van Der Vliet Pluralism, hybridity and the increasing internationalisation of the twenty-first century art scene require an appropriate educational facility; an iconic building for the education, expression and exhibition of art in Melbourne near the centre of the city.

Located on the old Carlton United Brewery site on the corner of Swanston and Victoria Street, the structure immediately demands curious attention and provokes much thought.

With the immediate existing context comprising the Shrine of Remembrance, the civic spine and RMIT University with its iconic building program, this location on the edge of the CBD is further concerned with a contrast in scale of the buildings surrounding the site.

After a close study of the spatial relationships of the disciplines of the fine arts and a reconsideration of the bauhaus model, the proposition is that of a tower for a university.

The project should be seen as a collage of ideas which addresses its responsibility towards the city, towards RMIT University and towards the art students.

Supervisor Peter Corrigan, refer page 138 38